The Mexican American Workers Of San Antonio Texas

This is a study of how paternal race relations in San Antonio contributed to the rise of accommodation-minded African American leaders whose successful manipulation of the political and ethnic divisions provided goods, services and sustained voting rights during a period when African Americans throughout the South had lost such privileges. The unique demography of Mexican-, German-, Anglo- and African Americans; a service based economy of hotels, restaurants and saloons; and campaigns by white civic leaders to make San Antonio the premier commercial and vacation center of the Southwest nurtured a political machine that intended "to keep blacks in their place". This resulted in an assortment of Jim Crow laws; restrictive employment opportunities; and segregated schools, parks, and municipal services; albeit without mob lynching and racial violence.This paternal brand of racism resulted in the rise of one of the most powerful black political bosses of his time, Charles Bellinger. Challenges fromconservative white reformers and disgruntled black civil rights advocates failed to dislodge the hold Bellinger's machine had on the black community and the city, until the Great Depression. By examining employment, education, politics, and socio-cultural activities that contributed to the city's unique race relations; the study takes a hard look at whether "separate but equal" ever become a reality in San Antonio.

Hearing held by Ruben Salazar into the conditions of life and work among Mexican Americans in San Antonio, Texas, Dec. 1968.

Through extensive use of Spanish-language archives in Mexico and the United States, Zamora examines workers' independent organizations - including mutual aid societies and cooperatives that functioned as unions - as well as spontaneous informal actions, including strikes, by Texas Mexican workers. He portrays the gradual yet increasing integration of those organizations into the mainstream labor movement and examines labor solidarity across ethnic lines. In addition, he discusses the special role Mexican labor played in bridging labor struggles across the international border and in challenging racial exclusion on the job in the predominantly Anglo labor federations and in the broader institutional life of South Texas.

Even before the Depression, unemployment, low wages, substandard housing, and poor health plagued many women in what was then one of America's poorest cities--San Antonio. Divided by tradition, prejudice, or law into three distinct communities of Mexican Americans, Anglos, and African Americans, San Antonio women faced hardships based on their personal economic circumstances as well as their identification with a particular racial or ethnic group. Women of the Depression, first published in 1984, presents a unique study of life in a city whose society more nearly reflected divisions by the concept of caste rather than class. Caste was conferred by identification with a particular ethnic or racial group, and it defined nearly every aspect of women's lives. Historian Julia Kirk Blackwelder shows that Depression-era San Antonio, with its majority Mexican American population, its heavy dependence on tourism and light industry, and its domination by an Anglo elite, suffered differently as a whole than other American cities. Loss of migrant agricultural work drove thousands of Mexican Americans into the barrios on the west side of San Antonio, and with the intense repatriation fervor of the 1930s, the fear of deportation inhibited many Mexican Americans from seeking public or private aid. The author combines excerpts from personal letters, diaries, and interviews with government statistics to present a collective view of discrimination and culture and the strength of both in the face of crisis.

Includes information on Anglos, Catholic Church, Porfirio Diaz, migrants, mutual aid societies, Phelps Dodge Corporation, Rio Blanco, San Angel, San Antonio, strikes, Veracruz, women workers, etc.

On the plains between the San Antonio River and the Rio Grande lies the heartland of what is perhaps the largest ethnic region in the United States, Tejano South Texas. In this cultural geography, Daniel Arreola charts the many ways in which Texans of Mexican ancestry have established a cultural province in this Texas-Mexico borderland that is unlike any other Mexican American region. Arreola begins by delineating South Texas as an environmental and cultural region. He then explores who the Tejanos are, where in Mexico they originated, and how and where they settled historically in South Texas. Moving into the present, he examines many factors that make Tejano South Texas distinctive from other Mexican American regions—the physical spaces of ranchos, plazas, barrios, and colonias; the cultural life of the small towns and the cities of San Antonio and Laredo; and the foods, public celebrations, and political attitudes that characterize the region. Arreola's findings thus offer a new appreciation for the great cultural diversity that exists within the Mexican American borderlands.